ABSTRACT
Introduction Proper procedures are needed for Internet searching when an organization establishes a policy for the use of intelligence gleaned from the Internet, such as for background vetting, due diligence, competitive intelligence, and clearances. Practical methodology is covered in Section IV. This chapter is concerned with the strategy adopted by an agency or private entity for formal controls on the collection, analysis, and reporting of information from the Internet in compliance with management policy, including security. Such controls became necessary because of the proliferation of sources of information accessible from the Internet and the wildly varying nature (quality, accuracy) of the data, as well as malware, online. If the Internet is used for collecting certain types of data, such as government records, scientific research citations, press accounts, or product descriptions, there is only limited concern about the attributes of that data (as set out in Chapter 13, such as verification). However, social networking, blogs, chat, and even posted videos and photographs have decidedly less reliability. One way of looking at the nature of data available over the Internet is to examine the disclaimers ever present on websites that essentially exempt the host from the necessity of vouching for the accuracy, completeness, and usability of the data presented. Such disclaimers speak to the expectation that the percentage of data with errors could be relatively high (or perhaps the website hosts do not trust computers).
